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Topic: sudden drop in PH (Read 3846 times)

wash can work, depends on the milk and make. But overall, if salting and hitting your pH markers for rennet, drain, and mill/salt are not doing it, AND if a cold crash isn't doing it either, then you have some oddity in the bacterial payload. Perhaps your native LAB are having a synergistic reaction with your starter to rapidly accelerate pH curve or do a too-low terminal. IMHO, if nothing else is working at all, including pasteurization, then call it a quirk of the milk and flora and live with it. a 4.9 finish for cheddar is not the end of the world if you hit the drain and salt pH.

edit: I would try different starters before doing that, though.

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Taking an extended leave (until 2015) from the forums to build out my farm and dairy. Please e-mail or PM if you need anything.

I will change the starter this weekend as well, I have been using Ma11, I have on hand Ma16, FD and Meso 2. I have not tried pasteurization yet. I will split the 8 gals into two makes and alter each make and see what happens.

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If I had to give up cheese or chocolate, I'd give up chocolate in a heartbeat.

Suggest until you dial this in to exactly how you want it, to use smaller batch sizes (1 gal, maybe 2) altering one variable at a time until it all flows, and take careful notes. It's part of product R&D, sometimes stuff just doesn't work as expected and needs tweaks. Of course if your molds and other equipment don't allow for it, moot point.

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All my hoops for hard cheese are 8 1/4 inch round by 7 inches in height and my press is set to these molds. I have been making cheddar for several years and made at least a hundred wheels. I have never experienced this before, salt always slowed or stopped the PH drop. I may also try 1 gal raw and 3 gal store brand milk. What do you think the outcome would be if I did not use any starter, would the natural milk have enough to do the job?

« Last Edit: June 04, 2012, 08:28:02 PM by Devon »

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If I had to give up cheese or chocolate, I'd give up chocolate in a heartbeat.

If you cold crash it to 40 in a reasonable size wheel and it still drops .5? After salting? I've only ever seen that in some strains of acidophilus and bulgaricus, never in a meso. If your pH readings are correct, that is some crazy synergistic effect or strain you have there.

Try the milk alone at that temp and time how long it takes to get to 4.8 Better yet, see if you can take some readings throughout and plot a pH curve.

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Taking an extended leave (until 2015) from the forums to build out my farm and dairy. Please e-mail or PM if you need anything.

Remember when I posted about two different reading on two different meters? You told me one of the probes must be bad and I received a new probe and it corrected the problem. This is the reason I ended up with two meters. I run cal on both meters before each make. I will split the make this weekend, I will use Ma 16 in one and will not use any starter in the other. Worst thing that can happen is the same result.

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If I had to give up cheese or chocolate, I'd give up chocolate in a heartbeat.

Okay, but if you want, heat up some milk (a pint), to 80-85F, and put it in a pot of 90F water, and see how long it takes to coagulate. This will roughly mirror your make. You can take pH readings based on time directly in milk, and it will tell you ahead of time how the make will behave in terms of pH. Basically, am saying that there's no need to do a full make if you just want to determine pH behavior or your native flora.

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Taking an extended leave (until 2015) from the forums to build out my farm and dairy. Please e-mail or PM if you need anything.

Decided to do a two gal make while I was monitoring the PH level of the milk. I cut a steel press wheel and barrowed a 4 inch hoop from a friend. I did not use any starter, the Ph drop was slow so I missed every target PH.4:30 pm heated to 88 degrees PH 6.75Held for 45 minutes PH 6.74Added 1/4 teaspoon of Rennet 6.74Floc 14 minutes cut at 42 minutes PH 6.73Held 5 minutes, heated to 102 degrees over 50 minutes PH 6.69Held for 45 minutes PH 6.68Drained and added 1 1/2 teaspoon salt – Note PH dropped by .05 right away PH 6.63Cheddared for 80 minutes PH 6.59 and pressed overnight PH 5.32 when removed from press this morning.Left cheese out at room temp to dry and PH is 5.23 as of 5:30 pm today.It dawned on me last night the only recent change I have made was the salt I was using, I went from using canning/pickling salt to using Morton flaked salt. It was interesting to see a quick drop after salting.